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Friday, 18 May 2012

Holy Fizzsticks! Motivation?! Me?! Well I never....

Okay, so if you follow me on Twitter, you'll notice that this morning that I said I was signing off the interweb for an hour or so to concentrate on writing. I have a confession to make....I broke that resolution after about ten minutes.

BUT, I wasn't social networking or procrastinating - I was looking up ways to write out a plot outline. You would think, after having an interest in writing for about ten years and studying Publishing for the last three, I'd have some idea about how to write out a plot outline. Don't get me wrong - I've done it before, but the reason I was looking it up was because I was just wondering if there was any easier way of writing down a plot where you're not too sure yourself what's going to happen...and there isn't.

Turns out the easiest thing to do is to just....write.

Okay, let me explain - I am not currently working on any of the WIP's I have mentioned on this blog. Over the last week, a new idea for a novel/series has come to me and this time, I decided to give into the SNI (Slutty New Idea). Why? Because my old manuscript was frustrating me and I wanted to try something new. So I let this idea develop in my head and in a series of rambling notes on my phone, and today I decided to bite the bullet and do something about it.

It's very VERY likely that I'll give up on this idea after today. But I really hope I don't. So far this morning I've written the prologue to the book, fleshed out a few major plot lines and, the most fun bit in my opinion, written about my characters. I'm not generally into the whole 'what's your character's favourite colour?' and 'which side of the bed do they sleep on?' level of detail that most authors go into when thinking about their characters. I like letting my characters develop and see where they take me - to me, it's a lot more fun discovering that they hate cheese halfway through a story, rather than pigeon-holing them right at the start.

I've only taken one brief break to pop to the shop, make a cup of tea and write this post. I'm going to go straight back into it now - I'm terrified that if I leave this idea for more than 30 mins, I'll lose all motivation - so I'm going to develop it some more now!

Oh yeah, I also had a thought that in order to keep me interested in this project, I might try and complete a draft of the first book within 30 days, just to see if I can do it. Have any of you fellow authors ever attempted this?? If so, how did it go?